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A woodland scene in
fall just about 5 miles from my home. Beautiful in it's own right, this
scene would also make a nice background for a 3D artwork project such
as adding a model house in the foreground or a scene for a group of
fantasy creatures such as fairies or goblins running about.
The one issue with shooting and using such scenes for artwork is to
consider your perspective when shooting as this can affect the realism
of the final composited scene in your artwork.

Remember - Beauty
is in the eye of the beholder. I found this waterfall to be interesting
due to the layers of ice on the rocks. But another person may
rightfully so look at this scene and think - So What! You
have to develop a thick skin when it comes to both photography and art.
Not everyone will see the same beauty in your creations as you do. If
they do, that's great, but don't sweat it if you are the only fan of
some of your work. Over the years I have seen some photography and
artwork done by famous people that sold for large sums and I personnaly
did not like some of the work or even understand it. You must always be
your own biggest fan and also biggest critic. But create for you first
and foremost. If others enjoy your work, this is a big plus. Granted if
all of your work makes people ask "What were you thinking?" then maybe
it is time to regroup and take a hard honest look at your creations.

Never be in a rush.
Always look at a scene from several points of view when you shoot it.
Can I make the image more interesting by shooting closer or changing
the exposure. These 2 images were taken only minutes apart and with
just differant points of view and adjustments in the exposure but they
convey differant feelings. Granted, shooting multiple shots with film
is much more costly than if shooting digitally, but with either, take
your time and develop your eyes to see more than just one point of view.

Photos taken on the
West end of the lake located in the middle of my town shooting early in
the AM as the Sun located off to the left of the cameras POV is just
coming up. As you may have noticed from some of my images, this area
has no shortage of lakes and rivers as well as waterfalls.

I came to the
conclusion early in life that the true artist is Mother Nature. She
provides us with the beauty that we must develop an eye for to capture
and appreciate it. Only after you develop the eye to behold the beauty
and the technical skills to capture it, can you claim to be a
photographer and not just another person with a camera taking
snapshots. I readily admit that sometimes my own skills fall short and
although I have captured some great photographs over the years, I still
have taken my fair share of just plain snapshots. Even at my age, I am
still trying to perfect my craft.

Sometimes a photo
isn't all about the correct exposure. For both the boat and lighthouse
images, my primary concern was the great sky. I could have lightened up
the exposure in the camera or in post work to improve the detailing of
the boats and lighthouse, but the sky could have washed out and lost
the beauty of the magic hour at sunset. Since these were basicly
vacation snapshots, I did not want to spend a large amount of time
retouching the images which I will address on another page. Another
issue to watch for is what is in your background. How many times have
we taken a family photo and found in the final image that the garbage
can is showing up in the background or a tree seems to be growing out
of Uncle Ed's head. We have all done this. I mention this as the above
image appears to have the lighthouse in the background coming out of
the top of the boat. But in this particular case, I didn't have much of
a choice as I wanted to get both boats in the image and since the
larger boat was stuck on a sandbar and the Sun was going down, I had to
weigh my options and shoot from the vantage point that I did. So
frequently you have to bite the bullet and make tough choices in your
photography.

Don't Be Afraid Of
The Dark!Low
light exposures can result in some interesting photography. Especially
during early evening wihen enough natural lighting still remains to
help in obtaining a decent exposure. A tripod and an ability to shoot a
longer exposure is a must with evening images. But if a scene becomes
too dark then both film and digital images will start to show an
increased amount of grain in the final image. With digital images such
as the one above, you can also adjust the lighting and contrast
somewhat in post work with the computer, but you can only do so much
before your image starts to go bad on you, so use retouching sparingly.

In
recent years, our city has installed interesting looking light fixtures
along a walking path that goes around most of the lake in our town. The
fixture and the moon in the background just grabbed my eye and I felt
this could make an interesting shot. Here is a perfect example of doing
some minor retouching in post work. I adjusted the lighting of the
final digital image somewhat and I also was not happy with the washed
out look of the moon in the original, so I took a moon photo that was
better exposed and superimposed it over the original moon in this
photo. In this case, I felt that this worked out fairly well.

Continuing
with night images. One of my favorite subjects of photography is the
spectacular 4th of July fireworks that the local communities do such a
great job with. Our towns display is actually done on the evening of
July 3rd so as not to compete with a nearby cities display on the 4th.
The fireworks in these images are shot out over our lake and we have
thousands of people who show up for the display which lasts about an
hour.

I
have countless fireworks photos in my digital files and had thought of
setting up a web page just to display a number of these, but for now, I
decided to just post these 2 images. Perhaps this is a future web page
I will add to my site as time and server space permits.

Fireworks
can be a bit tricky to shoot with a camera. Since they require a longer
exposure time and to show multiple displays in one image, I always
shoot fireworks with my camera on a tripod and use an extended exposure
time. For the shots here, I was using an ISO of 250 and an exposure of
5 seconds at f8. I also used a remote trigger on my camera to prevent
any camera movement when taking the shots. It should be noted that the
original photos look much better as they were shot at a resolution of
3264 x 2176 pixels so the grain appearing in the images above are from
the major resizing down to 600 x400 pixels to properly fit these images
onto this web page.